But torrent is probably the wrong tech. I’m sure there would be many players willing to host a few TB or more each, which could be fronted via something so it’s transparent to the user.

But a better option might be a subscription model, anything else will be slammed by crawlers.

https://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0039.html https://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0046.html

but unfortunately most foss torrent clients do not support it, partly because at release libtorrent 2.0.x had poor io performance in some cases so torrent clients reverted to the 1.2.x branch

No one uses IPFS. For the average user, it is significantly more difficult to get started. For the experienced user, the ecosystem of tools around IPFS is extremely small.

All in all, IPFS offers very little benefit over torrents in practice and has a much smaller user pool.

I wish I could find that article!

edit: https://github.com/internetarchive/dweb-archive/blob/master/...

Easier to send fiat to IA for them to invest (~$2/GB) and to pay to keep the disks spinning somewhere safe across the world.

(ia volunteer, no affiliation otherwise)

https://www.softwareheritage.org/jobs/

As for the AWS stuff. Look at the ties between these organizations, pretty clear Amazon is basically self-dealing via a non-profit to write stuff off or have some other scheme.

The reality is that many things don't exist simply because someone isn't paid to do it.

(Also, consider that when you forbid such functionality, the only thing that happens is that its development becomes private. It's like DRM: it only hurts legitimate customers.)